Car Camping And Bike Riding

Earlier this week we loaded our camping gear and bikes in to the truck and drove about an hour and a half to Marion Reservoir here in Kansas. We arrived early afternoon and rode the bikes on the gravel, dirt and rock roads in the area. Once back at our campsite we set up camp, ate dinner and when the sun set we went to bed. The next morning we had coffee and breakfast before returning home.

The ride… Our ride was enjoyable despite some of the roads being surfaced with rocks so large that we walked a few segments. The area had flooded this Spring and many of the roads had been resurfaced with large limestone rocks. Nova was on her 700c x 38 Salsa Journeyman and me on my 650b Journeyman. It was nice to be somewhere with different scenery and variation in terrain without having to travel far from home.

The food… Dinner was some flavor of packaged Knorr rice to which I added canned chickpeas and served with flour tortillas. We really like these packaged rice dinners but I feel I should do something different next time especially if we’re camping out of the truck which I could bring more and heavier items and a cooler. Breakfast was flour tortillas and bagels smeared with chocolate almond butter from these convenient little packets that we found on sale at Target. I had forgot to bring coffee filters so I used these heavy napkins we had to filter the coffee which worked pretty well. Worst case I guess I could have made cowboy coffee.

The beer… For our post ride refreshment and to wash down dinner, Nova chose Samuel Adams Octoberfest which we picked up in a nearby town on our way to the lake.

For those who’ve been following our (bike) camping saga, we recently bought a larger tent and air mattress for car camping. This was the first time to use them. We slept a little better then we previously have when bike camping due to the bigger tent and queen size air mattress. This lake was much quieter than the one we’ve previously camped at close to home which helped. My main complaints on this somewhat restful night was the humidity. Even though it was slightly cool overnight we felt wet and sticky the entire night. Also sometime during the night an animal ran off with one of my flip flops that I had left right outside the tent door.

We hope to do more car camping/bike riding trips like this in the future.